Saturday, August 22, 2009

DoJ IO: "CIA Conducted Mock Executions"

A long-suppressed report by the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general to be released next week reveals that CIA interrogators staged mock executions as part of the agency's post-9/11 program to detain and question terror suspects, NEWSWEEK has learned.

According to two sources—one who has read a draft of the paper and one who was briefed on it—the report describes how one detainee, suspected USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was threatened with a gun and a power drill during the course of CIA interrogation. According to the sources, who like others quoted in this article asked not to be named while discussing sensitive information, Nashiri's interrogators brandished the gun in an effort to convince him that he was going to be shot. Interrogators also turned on a power drill and held it near him. "The purpose was to scare him into giving [information] up," said one of the sources. A federal law banning the use of torture expressly forbids threatening a detainee with "imminent death."

The report also says, according to the sources, that a mock execution was staged in a room next to a detainee, during which a gunshot was fired in an effort to make the suspect believe that another prisoner had been killed. The inspector general's report alludes to more than one mock execution.

The report also says, according to the sources, that a mock execution was staged in a room next to a detainee, during which a gunshot was fired in an effort to make the suspect believe that another prisoner had been killed. The inspector general's report alludes to more than one mock execution.

This is potentially important for certain contractors and/or CIA officials, since, as we've learned recently, any Obama administration probe will focus only on those who exceeded the generous provisions for torture in the Yoo/Bybee OLC memos. And "mock executions" were not explicitly authorized by any OLC memo known to date.

Mock executions were not authorized in Justice Department memoranda that outlined the legal parameters that Bush administration lawyers believed should govern the use of "enhanced" interrogations. The Justice Department memoranda, once highly classified, were released earlier this year by the Obama administration in the face of strenuous objections from the CIA and former Bush White House officials.

These initial media strikes have two related purposes: trial-ballooning sentiment on "found objects" of CIA misconduct topic, and laying out a potential canvas upon which low-level, and only low-level, CIA agents will be prosecuted, as has been (sort of) indicated by Holder's DoJ. Howling from both political sides about this has ensued, of course, but that appears not to have deterred Holder to date. Indeed, the release of the 2004 CIA IG report seems designed primarily to place into the public realm, instances of CIA wrongdoing that the DoJ could pursue within the lowest ranks of the agency.